All posts tagged Anthony Kennedy

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opening lines in the U.S. v. Windsor majority opinion lacked the sweep the swing justice injected into the writing of Lawrence v. Texas, the previous landmark gay rights-related case from 2003. But by the end of the first page the rejection of the Defense of Marriage Act was clear, unlike his preamble in the anti-sodomy case that was flowery but only suggested the outcome.

“Two women then resident in New York were married in a lawful ceremony in Ontario, Canada in 2007. Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer returned to their home in New York City. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her entire estate to Windsor. Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses, but was barred from doing so by §3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act,” Justice Kennedy begins in the ruling, closing out the preamble with, “This court granted certiorari and now affirms the judgment in Windsor’s favor.” Read More »

Pete Wehner writes that, on the Snowden affair, on Syria and on missile defense, Russian President Vladimir Putin has gotten the better of President Obama. His bottom line: “He’s cleaning Obama’s clock.” [Commentary]

Yale law professor Noah Feldman sees Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in the University of Texas case as a sign that, like the pragmatic former Justice O’Connor, he envisions affirmative action as necessary, but does want to strike it down “gradually, stepwise, over several more years of litigation. over the next couple of decades.” [Bloomberg View]

The indefatigable Ralph Nader, populist gadfly extraordinaire, isn’t done with presidential politics. He says he plans to play a role in the 2016 campaign—by finding a group of 10 or so social-minded billionaires and encouraging them to run to shake up the system. [Politico] Read More »

But Slate’s Emily Bazelon found in Justice Kennedy’s remarks signs that California’s Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, is going down. Kennedy, she notes, argued that the children of gay couples want them to have the full benefits of marriage, a remark that provided the “high note of urgency and emotion” of the entire day. [Slate]

Another red-state Democratic senator comes out for gay marriage. This time, it’s Montana’s Jon Tester. [Salon] Read More »

Nate Silver says the message from recent public-opinion polls is that President Barack Obama has lost his edge over Republicans on public confidence in his management of the economy. [New York Times]

Pew’s Andy Kohut documents with poll data how far the Republican party has been pulled to the right of the general public, and suggests this will make it tough for the GOP to win national elections. [Washington Post]

Unlike housing recoveries of the past, which were led by families looking for and finally finding places to live, the current housing recovery is being driven more by investors and speculators buying housing stock to rent it out. [WSJ]

How Europe’s leaders misread the politics of Cyprus, the ties between its banks and its newly elected leaders and Russia’s influence on the island economy — and put the euro at risk. [FT] Read More »

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